Sunday Best

The theme of this year’s Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Benefit Gala (aka just the Met Gala), held last Monday, was a broad one: “Fashion Is Art.” Lots of ways to interpret that mandate, but I quite liked the way the team at Mugler (the fashion line formerly run by the late Thierry Mugler, now with creative director Miguel Castro Freitas at the helm) ran with it. This gown, worn by Emma Chamberlain, was custom-painted by artist Anna Deller-Yee, using 30 base colors and requiring more than 40 hours of painting and four days of drying time. The result is a glorious work of art; she looks like a mermaid rising from a dramatically color-flecked sea.